Technical Field
The exemplary and non-limiting embodiments relate generally to augmented-reality (AR), virtual-reality (VR), and presence-captured (PC) experiences, content consumption, and monitoring. More particularly, the exemplary and non-limiting embodiments relate to free-viewpoint rendering of spatial audio, such as object-based audio.
Brief Description of Prior Developments
Virtual reality is a rendered version of a visual and audio scene that is delivered to the user. This rendering may be designed to mimic the visual and audio sensory stimuli of the real world as naturally as possible in order to provide the user a feeling of being in a real location or being a part of a scene. Free-viewpoint in audiovisual consumption may refer to the user being able to move in this “content consumption space”. Thus, the user may, for example, move continuously or in discrete steps in an area around the point corresponding to a capture point (such as the position of a virtual reality device, for example, a Nokia OZO™ device) or, for example, between at least two such capture points. The user may perceive the audiovisual scene in a natural way at each location, in each direction, in the allowed area of movement. When at least some part of the experience is simulated, for example, by means of computer-generated additional effects or modifications of the captured audiovisual information, the experience may be referred to using an umbrella term “mediated reality experience”.